On Tuesday, April 5, 2005, at 8:57:59 AM, Lex Spoon wrote:

> Whoa, Celeste's "empty trash" can really speed things up, especially if
> you are on mailing lists or if you use the built-in spam catcher.  It
> makes it load and save MUCH faster.  It's highly recommended, and it's
> worth reconsidering the automatic deletion of trash as time goes on.
> Users shouldn't have to "sweep the floors" like this, IMHO, if it is not
> necessary.  Maybe auto-delete mail that has been in the trash for 10
> days?

For some reason this note struck me and I'd like to throw down a
challenge:

I presently have 137,396 emails stored in my email client, The Bat!,
basically everything I've received since April 15, 2002. It's sorted
into about 20 folders, including the most generic one at over 40,000
mails. The Bat! can switch to the 40,000 mail folder and get the
list up in about 3 seconds. It can search all 40,000 file for header
information in 3 seconds, and for content in the mail text in about 2
minutes.

If Celeste is slow with substantially fewer mails than that, then I
would most respectfully suggest that there's something in its design
that is open to improvement. Sure, The Bat! is probably written in
C++ or something, but we all know that high-volume speed comes from use of
intelligent data structures, not low-level language. Don't we?

Again ... now that we know fast email is possible with large
volumes, the question becomes ... how might we do that, if we cared?

Ron Jeffries
www.XProgramming.com
Steering is more important than speed,
in driving and in software development.